By Kelli DeWalt

Enter a bar or a gym on Long Island and you’re bound to run into at least one tanned, buffed guy with spiked hair held up by massive amounts of gel. Their voice can be heard from a mile away and that’s before they have hit the club to rock out to the latest techno music. They’re commonly referred to as “guidos” and now they’re a household name thanks to Brett Tietjen’s YouTube hit, “My New Haircut.”

By now 13.5 million people have seen the video and the number continues to rise every day. Tietjen, who graduated from the University in 2002, created the comedic video that makes fun of the stereotypical Long Island guy.

Tietjen explains that he had already made some short films prior to “My New Haircut,” but he wanted to do something YouTube-friendly. The idea was easy to come up with because most of it was gleaned from real life. All he had to do was look around him for inspiration.

“The video was filmed last June and, after the kids went back to college, it just blew up,” Tietjen said.

The tour called, “The Skanks and Broskis Tour,” has gone all over the country appearing at local bars and clubs.

“It’s hard,” he said. “We pretty much have to drink every night.” Tietjen just got back from touring in Detroit and Canada, but is ready to be done. With his popularity steadily rising though, a sponsor, Jagermeister, doesn’t want him to be done just yet.

With a master’s degree in film production from New York Institute of Technology, Teitjen already has his own production company called L2X Productions along with his partner and co-star, Mike Allen.

Tietjen has already filmed a pilot for a reality show and would now prefer to focus on the full feature he’s writing based on his character. He’s planning on going to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks to work out the details.

While the video is still a hit, Teitjen rarely gets recognized unless he’s in costume. With blond hair, a clean cut look and a down-to-earth persona, it’s hard to put the two together. Yet the “guido”-types don’t mind a non-“guido” making fun of them.

“Ironically they seem to like it more,” Tietjen said. “We’ve surprisingly have had no problems whatsoever.”

As with most hits, there are copycats and “My New Haircut” is no different. There are spoofs ranging from an Asian version to a senior citizen version. Eric Niederman, a University senior, created the highly popular Jewish version.

“I knew about it and was watching the Asian one and thought, ‘There needs to be a Jewish one,'” Niederman said.

That following night he and his friend, fellow University student Mike Benezra, decided to write the script for it. They scoped out a bunch of locations in Mineola and finally settled on a local bar called O’Donnels.

The two Irish men working there were only concerned as to whether Niederman was funny or not and gladly offered to let them use their location. The film was shot, edited and aired all in one day. “I put it all together while Mike was at class,” Niederman said.

With almost 1.4 million hits, their video, too, has found fans everywhere. “I get random friend requests on Facebook every day,” said Niederman. “It’s a bit stalkerish.” Yet that comes with the territory. When one starts to get recognized at Starbucks, one can expect anything.

Niederman doesn’t seem to mind too much though. “My friends like the video, but they’re tired by the fact that I’m not very modest about it,” Niederman said.

While Niederman is a marketing major, he creates packages for Thursday Nite Live, the University’s version of the popular NBC skit show, Saturday Night Live. Niederman does stand-up comedy as well. He performed for the University Thursday, April 3, with a member of The Dave Chapelle Show.

“My family doesn’t like my comedy, but thought the video was hilarious,” Niederman said, “They showed it to my grandparents which was awkward because I cursed a lot in it.”

As with most successful things, there come both positives and negatives. A downside to its success is that Niederman has to monitor the YouTube comments, censoring the anti-Semitic ones. “People say the worst things,” Niederman said, citing racial slurs as an example.

On the bright side, however, the video’s success has garnered a lot of positive attention for Niederman. “Hillel hired me as an intern to try and make Judaism cool,” Niederman said. Northwestern University’s Jewish magazine, “Schmooze” put him on their cover and did a piece on him as well.

While no one can dispute the fact that the original “My New Haircut” and its spoofs are wildly popular, no one could have predicted their current success. If you haven’t already seen the video online, go watch it. If you have, get inspired to make one of your own. Who knows where it will lead you?